But the internal fires which sprung from the vitals of the earth almost supplied the want of a nocturnal luminary. It is probable that there were but few spots on the globe which were out of view of some flaming volcano. We count the active volcanoes by integers. When we have enumerated Etna, Vesuvius, Hecla, Jorullo, Colima, and one or two others, we have reached the end of our list. In the days of Homer the volcanoes were counted by scores; in the carboniferous age they may have, must have, flourished by hundreds and thousands. That vast incandescent mass, of which the crust only had cooled, kept boiling up every few hours, and furiously pouring out the vials of its wrath upon an earth inhabited by transitory creatures. Go where the traveller may, he will still find traces of this terrible age. That tell-tale rock--"the trap"--is peculiar to no meridian; and from the Hudson's Bay territories nearly to Cape Magellan, from Spitzbergen to Borneo, either this, or some mountain range of volcanic origin, here with scoriæ disseminated through the more regular formations, there with copper or gold held in a native state in half-decayed quartz, tell a very legible story of the time when all the component parts of the earth were in a fluid state, and were thrown off by the boiling mass beneath as a kettle throws off froth and scum. There came a day when the under crust could no longer bear the weight of the mass which, after being thrown off daily, returned, by the force of gravitation, to the surface of its parent. A time came when the incandescent and inchoate planet--if so daring a figure may be ventured--felt the necessity of unusually strenuous measures. It gathered all its fiery energies, and mustered all its fearful strength. The effect was universal, not local. With such bodies distances of 25,000 miles must be trifling, and the earth's meridian--a paltry 8000 miles--not worth mentioning. One can imagine the purpose and effort being common to the entire molten and raging mass.